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 Posted: Wed Jun 25, 2014 9:18 pm
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Posted: Sun Jun 29, 2014 7:18 am
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Posted: Thu Aug 24, 2017 12:25 am
 Fight Song
Asmodeus was tired. No, that wasn’t fair -- tired didn’t even begin to properly cover what she was feeling. She was feeling beaten down, kicked around, utterly discarded, and all because she happened to be a Dark Mirror.
Three times, in as many days. Three different Order-side fighters had looked at her and said “you know what? I bet that because she’s Chaos, she deserves to get smacked around.” She had done nothing to any of them, except be on the wrong side, in the wrong place, at the wrong time. And that was ******** absurd. She didn’t deserve to be dragged through the mud for nothing but the bad luck of happening to be a member of the Court.
She made it back to her apartment complex, aching and bitter and pissed off, and powered down, storming into her building and to the elevator. She could feel the doorman’s eyes on her - a sweet older gentleman named Fred, because her parents insisted that whatever building she lived in at least have that level of security. Because they were so concerned, with all the terrible things happening in Destiny City.
Pah. Like they really gave a s**t. She’d only ever been a means to make them look better, anyway.
“Miss MacKenna? Are you alright?” He asked, and Faith paused.
“I...yeah,” she said. “Had a run-in with someone who wasn’t happy to see me, but you know me, I handled it.” She shrugged.
“Gave ‘em the old what-for, eh?” Fred teased. “You seem to have to do that a lot lately.”
“More than I’d like to,” Faith acknowledged. “But hey, it’s a crazy city.” She laughed it off, and gave him a little wave. “I’ll see you around,” she said.
“Stay safe, Miss MacKenna!” Fred said. Faith wanted to laugh. Oh, he had no idea how difficult that would be for her. But then, if he knew, she was pretty sure Fred would stop her every time she tried to go out, because he was good like that and wanted to see her safe.
“I will!” Faith called back as she stepped into the elevator. She dropped the cheery facade once she was in the elevator, and she let out a brief exhale, sinking against the wall. It was exhausting, being out there, fighting every single day, and it was even more exhausting to have to do it when people were trying to kill you for nothing more than wearing black.
She just wanted it to be over. She wanted to stop feeling like she had to be afraid, like she had to turn and run every time she felt an Order aura.
Because not everyone Order was bad. She thought of Hati, and sighed - they’d only run into each other the once, but she still carried a flickering flame in her heart for him. There was something special about that man - something unique and wonderful, and God, she wanted to find him again. Maybe if she was very, very lucky, she would go out on patrol some night and he would turn up out there, and she’d be able to dance around him all over again.
Oh, well. Pipedreams. She would find him again if she was meant to, and that was the end of it.
She stepped out of the elevator and to her apartment, and stumbled through the door, trying to ignore the degree to which she ached up and down. It sucked. It sucked a lot. She wanted to curl up and never move again, but that wasn’t practical, so she just peeled off her clothes, stumbled into the bathroom, and started up the shower.
She was careful with her aching injuries, trying to avoid aggravating them any more than she had to. Usually, she had plenty of time to recover between scuffles, but three battles in a row had left her stretched thin and exhausted.
Sometimes, she wondered if it was worth it at all. Sure, she was a Senshi, and she liked being a Senshi most of the time, but so often, she found herself beaten down and tired and...and hating what she was. She powered up, she went out, she drained a little energy, she stumbled home and tried to pretend that she didn’t feel absolutely awful about it, repeat.
It was stupid and awful and she knew she deserved better than that but she couldn’t make herself care. She was so utterly beaten down by all of the pain that being a Senshi was putting her through that she just...didn’t care anymore.
She should. She should be passionate and excited, she should want to fight. But she didn’t. She couldn’t make herself be.
Every time she started to get passionate again, she got reminded that no matter what she did, Order thought that she was no different from the Negaverse. She might as well give herself over to them, just like she had in that terrible dark future, and be done with it. Maybe she could even pretend that she was okay with it.
Except -- except no. She couldn’t just let herself be okay with it. She couldn’t give up. She was better than that. She had to be better than that.
Hati hadn’t judged her. He’d looked at her and seen more than just a Negaverse pawn, and he wasn’t even the only one. She didn’t have to lay down and let herself be consumed by despair.
She climbed out of the shower and grabbed her first aid kit, tending to her injuries with the fervor of renewed conviction. She wasn’t just going to lay down and be miserable. She didn’t have to be. She could keep going, keep fighting, and eventually, maybe she’d be able to get out. Maybe she’d be able to present herself to an Order Royal and ask them to cleanse her starseed and feel like she’d earned her damn redemption arc.
She just had to keep fighting to make that dream a reality.
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Posted: Fri Aug 25, 2017 11:48 pm
Crystal Palace
Meeting Lysithea was probably one of the best things that could have possibly happened to her. Asmodeus had certainly thought plenty about getting out of the Court, but she’d never really had such a wonderful, concrete chance to pick herself up and go. She had someone on the other side that was waiting for her, as a friend, and had offered her a place to stay and had even mentioned other people living there.
It was...something she hadn’t even really begun to hope for. There had never really seemed to be a concrete place to go, and that had been the biggest thing preventing her from just picking up her stuff and going.
But there it was, right in front of her -- someone who was willing to open their door and let her in, all because they wanted to help. No other ulterior motive, no suspicions that might result in a slammed door in Asmodeus’s face. Just...open, honest, welcoming kindness.
It was all she could have asked for and more. She had been incredibly excited to go back there, to meet the other girl again and get to tell her how she’d progressed. She wanted to share how much better she was feeling just for having decided, wanted to tell her that she was looking for a way to purify - she hadn’t found it yet, but she was sure it was out there. After all, she’d heard whispers of other Dark Mirrors purifying, and she remembered feeling a pang of pain in her chest, twice, a long while back. It had stopped her in her tracks and left her breathless, and from what she understood, that had been from other people who chose to leave.
She wasn’t sure how she was going to find her answers - maybe if she was lucky, she’d run into them.
She wanted to be able to tell Lysithea all of that, and delight with her new friend in the future that was open to her like a glorious, wonderful book.
But that wasn’t going to happen.
She was trapped. In Mirrorspace, or wherever Altea’s castle was -- actual, literal extrasolar space? Somewhere else? Some other strange realm beyond realms, a place only accessible through magic and mirrorwalking?
It didn’t matter. Wherever it wa,s it wasn’t Earth, and Earth was where Asmodeus desperately longed to be.
She wanted to be home for so many reasons, but she wasn’t afraid to admit that a large one was because she wanted to see her friend again. She wanted to tell Lysithea that she wasn’t out yet but she was still working on it -- that she hadn’t abandoned the possibility of being free. She wanted to at least be able to speak to her, briefly, to let her know she wouldn’t be able to make it but that it wasn’t because she didn’t want to.
Even that, though, was impossible, because she was trapped here in the Mirror. There was no way to communicate with anyone on the outside, even other members of the Court, and no way to know how long she would be here.
It tore her up, wondering if Lysithea was worried about her, or if she just assumed Asmodeus had given up. Would she come back the next week? Would Asmodeus even be back, then? There was no telling how long it might take them to find a way home. And that was assuming there was a way home, because she was getting serious horror movie vibes from Altea.
It seemed all too possible that there would never be an exit, that Altea would keep them here to serve as twisted props for whatever weird fantasy she was living in. The kind of weird fantasy that had her talking about her bizarre crystal servants like they were real people, and that had her acting as if this world was normal and healthy when it...wasn’t.
But there was no choice. They had to bend to her whims, or they would risk angering her, and Asmodeus was all for fighting when necessary, but with nowhere to go that seemed like a terrible idea.
So they were stuck in this bizarre mirror fairy tale, and she looked crazy for being suspicious of someone who was opening her home to them.
She sighed, flopping on the bed in the room she’d claimed in the castle. It was nice, and comfortable, and she’d managed to find one with a single bed that was decorated in reds, and never let it be said that she would pass up an opportunity to be on-theme with her surroundings. She was, after all, fire - she might as well look the part.
It was easy to just let herself get lost in thought here. She had so little else to do, after all - her best option was to just lay there and drift, and plan. Because she had to have a plan if she was going to get through this.
Her best option was to make as nice with her Court as possible. None of them could know she had one foot already out the door; that would endanger her chances of getting out of this as alive and uninjured as possible. She didn’t necessarily think ill of everyone there, butt hey had to operate as a unit, and it would be easy to distrust someone who wasn’t really committed to the cause.
How many of them would leave her behind if they knew she wasn’t loyal? Maybe none, but she didn’t want to test it, any more than she wanted to test how far Altea’s generous good will extended. It was best to just fall in line and let herself pretend. Besides, maybe it would be good for her - maybe she’d make a friend or two in the Court.
(Not that she intended to turn her back on her friends in Order. She wasn’t going to abandon Lysithea. She wasn’t going to abandon Hati. She wasn’t going to abandon Ananke. They were all dear to her. She still barely knew anyone in the Court at all - her own fault, she’d avoided them - but. Still. Those things mattered.)
Asmodeus sighed and rolled over. This whole train of thought was horribly unpleasant, and she wasn’t enjoying mulling over them, but they were all things she would have to consider. There were far too many ways this could go utterly terribly, and she wasn’t going to just wait for all the badness to come to her.
To that end, she pushed herself out of bed and walked out of the room. There were plenty of people around, and she probably could have looked around for a member of her court, but that wasn’t what she wanted to do. She wanted to wander and get an idea of how the castle felt. Nothing in-depth, nothing really investigatory, but she could at least know the lay of the land. Get a map going in her head. After all, every game was easier when you could see what the dungeon looked like.
So she walked, up and down hallways, observing and considering. She paused in front of some of the crystallized mirrors and frowned - that was a distinctly strange phenomenon. The growths seemed almost organic, and they were everywhere, and that was distinctly the weirdest part of all of this. She wanted to understand, but short of trying to pry off some of it and fiddling with it, she wasn’t sure how, and she suspected that if she took the time to try, she would end up attracting unwanted questions. So she moved on. Better that way, really.
The servants, too, were fascinating, and as she wandered the halls she ran into a few of them, and regarded them with vague half-interested curiosity. Their movements were oddly fluid for something made of hard rock, and she wasn’t entirely sure how alive they were - but perhaps that was unfair. Nonverbal didn’t mean dead, after all.
She exhaled. She wasn’t going to get any answers this way, but she felt like she had a better idea of where the hell she was and what the castle was like, at least. That was nice. Maybe she would try mapping it out for real, at some point, or exploring more in depth.
But for the moment she was content just to do that much, and before she could attract too much attention with her idle wanderings around Altea’s castle, she turned and headed back for her room. There was, after all, so much to think about. So much to consider. The longer she spent trying to do that, the less time she could spend being scared witless of what was going to happen to all of them (because this was terrifying. They were trapped, far from home, with no way back.) All she had to do was stay calm and use her head. That was it. If she could just do that, she would make it through this adventure, and she’d be able to go home.
And when she did, she would run to Lysithea and they would find a way for her to purify, and she would be free from the Mirror forever.
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Posted: Fri Feb 21, 2025 12:37 pm
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Posted: Fri Feb 21, 2025 12:37 pm
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Posted: Thu May 01, 2025 7:22 pm
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